The Trusted Sponsor: Conceptualizing a Growing Phenomenon in EU Economic Migration Policy

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the emerging phenomenon of the “trusted sponsor”, a State-approved employer or institution hosting non-EU economic migrants in the EU. To be approved as a trusted sponsor, financial requirements and obligations must be met. When successful, sponsors buy their way into being private gatekeepers. Building on the literatures on privatization of migration control, the paper will propose typologies to qualify the sponsors’ relation with the approving state and the migrant. Like in the kafala system, the migrant becomes highly dependent on the sponsor, a side-effect of the “trusted sponsor” phenomenon which works against the value of self-reliance of migrant workers in the host-society and has received scant attention in literature. When the sponsor neglects financial obligations (such as paying taxes or premiums, or reporting obligations on minor changes in salaries or student progress) or is sanctioned for other neglects, the sponsor risks exclusion from the program and the migrants depending on this sponsor may lose their legal residence.

This paper analyses the trusted sponsor formula through EU legislation and policy documents and the long time on the ground experience with the phenomenon in The Netherlands. Importantly, the paper questions if and if so how the EU and its member states could use the trusted sponsorship model in the search for improving selecting wanted migrants and as a ‘management tool’ to structure the arrival of (less wanted) migrants currently moving though irregular channels.